


She Goes By Jack

by Sia



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-03-02
Packaged: 2019-03-26 01:50:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 4,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13847553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sia/pseuds/Sia
Summary: Collection of ficlets and short stories from the companions' POV of Sole Survivor, Avery "Jack" Vega.





	1. Vault Dweller, Sole Survivor

She goes by Jack.

After all, she doesn’t know why her husband was killed and her baby stolen. Announcing her real name seems rather stupid. Exactly two people and Codsworth know her story. And only Codsworth knows her real name. And she’ll scrap him if he says it.

To everyone else, she’s just a helpful Vault Dweller. Something apparently out of legend. She’s canny enough to play into that. 

Before she met Nate, she ran with a tough crowd. Fighting for a better life in the technological utopian lie of 2077 had become an actual battle, where she learned to shoot and pick locks. Discovered the adrenaline rush of fighting back and defending those who couldn’t. Then got the legal degree to do it in the courtroom.

Meeting in a bar doesn’t usually have a happy ending, but when a tired soldier buys an overworked ADA a drink, sometimes they do. Nate didn’t care about her checkered past. And she didn’t care about his war record. And when he snuck her on base one night and let her pilot his power armor, well… They had a reason to get married and he had a reason to retire. He didn’t want to turn her into a widow or leave his child without a father sooner than he had to.

Funny how things work out. 

She was born with cancer in her eyes. But her mama once said it never stopped her. The doctors took her eyes to save her life and when it was found it hadn’t spread to her nerves or the surrounding tissue, everyone breathed a sigh of relief. She would see, just not like everyone else. Her parents sold almost everything they owned to get her the occular implants that took the place of the faulty eyes that tried to kill her when she was born. They hadn’t even had time to test Shaun for the same cancer.

Did he survive it? Did he get it? Let him have Nate’s eyes, please. 

Though she was beginning to wonder how long ago he’d been taken from her. And what was done to her in that freezer.

She cut the pin-curls off with the first knife she found. Too bad it was duller than a chipped plate. She cried over her husband, her tears wiped away the makeup. Her freckles, that he once loved to trace, faded from lack of sunlight. Her body felt thinner and weaker, but somehow tougher. She crawled out of Vault 111.

Angry. And armed.


	2. Long Legs and Battle Scars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sole Survivor meets another relic from a time long, long ago. 
> 
> Sort of.

When she walked into my office, I could tell right away, she’d seen her share of trouble. She was nothing but long legs and battle scars. I thought about going for my gun, but figured she’d beat me to it. Then there was the whole thing where she’d just saved my tin-can ass. 

The tall kid in the cowboy hat behind her shadowed her like he’d take a bullet for her. Or put one in me for trying.

But her, it was clear anyone doing any shooting in her direction would get the business end of her really impressive shotgun right in their face. When she took off the mirrored sunglasses, I was surprised to see synthetic eyes looking back at me. Not something you normally see in a human’s face.

Not any more. 

“I am looking for a boy,” she said. “A baby. My … son.” The kid behind her managed to summon some toughness from somewhere and actually give me pause for a minute. 

I lit a cigarette. I wondered if it was his kid. But no, she didn’t act like she was with him. She acted like he was an accessory. A weapon on her hip like the shotgun. She was hurting too bad to see beyond anyone’s usefulness. She also didn’t talk like anyone from around here. She sounded educated, or at least her enunciation did. She was doing her best to hide a first class mind behind those fake eyes. Maybe an Institute education. Couldn’t get that sort of diction just walking around in the Wasteland. Must’ve been the reason she didn’t talk much down in the Vault beyond general reticence. Hard to hide natural inclinations consistently.

“I haven’t heard of any missing kids. Got a name?”

“Shaun. He was less than a year old when he was ... taken.” Her long fingers twitched at her pistol holster. Her pale blue eyes tightened at the corners, focusing somewhere over my shoulder. She ran her other hand through her short cap of dark curls. 

I took out my notebook. Interesting. I doubted I could help her; finding a baby in the Wasteland would be harder than tracking a radroach through a ruin. 

But I was a sucker for a lost cause.

And a nice pair of legs.

“Where was he taken from?”

“My… Vault. Vault 111.” I looked up at her. The kid put his hand on her shoulder and she seemed to shrink in on herself. Not because of him, but because the memories weighed that much. The story spilled out of her. All of it. And it was all of it unbelievable.

If it weren’t for those eyes.

I put my notebook away. Paper was too precious and it was mostly for show anyway. “You’re gonna start with a sonofabitch by name of Kellogg….”


	3. The Luckiest Man In The Commonwealth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Preston Garvey really feels....

You know, when I asked her to be the General, I had only the vaguest idea what Jack had been through. She told me, sure. Late nights, trying to stay awake in the Wasteland wondering if something will eat you in the dark, tends to lend itself to random conversations.

I’m ashamed to say her story was incredible and I didn’t believe it at first. But she hacked computers like someone born to it, and there was barely a lock that stood in her way. And she was a crack shot. I should know, she saved my life more than once.

And people followed her. I followed her. And not just because that blue jumpsuit fit her like a second skin. When she told me she loved me, I wanted to stand on the Castle walls and shout it for the entire Commonwealth to hear. Instead, I just kissed her, trying to prove with everything I was, everything I would ever be, that I was hers. She’d given me hope in my darkest hour, corny as that sounded. And her past, as unbelievable as it was, was just as dark as mine. Just as full of loss. Maybe more. At least my world still existed.

Maybe I could try to make the one she woke up in a little brighter.

I stood outside Red Rocket after our first night together. I’d left our bed where she was still asleep – I felt a little smug about that. But this? This I had to do. 

I stared up at the stars, Dogmeat leaning on my shins like the lazy lug he was. I was suddenly self-conscious about the hokiness of talking to a dead man. “Not one word, Dog.” He looked up at me and panted. I cleared my throat and looked back up at the stars. I’m not entirely sure what I was looking for. It just seemed… right. “Whoever you were, you were the luckiest man in the Commonwealth. I just want you to know, I’ll take care of her. She’s safe with me. And we’ll find your son. You have my word.”

The next day, we headed for Diamond City.

And Nick Valentine and the Memory Den.

She came out of that pod, shaking. I’d never seen Jack so rattled. Not even staring down the face of a charging Deathclaw when it surprised us while we were out of our armor taking the risk on a bath in the one rad-free patch of water we’d found. She’d stood calmly, feet braced in the mud, bareassed naked, firing her shotgun till the thing fell at her feet, twitching. I’d barely gotten my rifle up to my shoulder before it was all over. 

Just like that Deathclaw, she stared unflinching at the doc and I knew she wasn’t gonna admit to a damned thing in front of that reporter’s knowing eyes, no matter what the doctor said while she was under. “I’m so sorry to make you live through that again.” I knew, then, what she relived. What she’d had to watch Kellog do all over again. 

Later, she would break down and mourn him and Shaun again, I knew. She would fold herself into my arms and let the grief take her like she hadn’t been able to do the first time. When her survival mattered more. Her revenge. Finding Shaun. Maybe now, there would be time to bury him, her husband. Maybe. But right now, I held out my hand and she clung to it like she was drowning. Her eyes were wet behind her sunglasses, her thin fingers clutched mine hard enough to hurt. I braced her and she leaned on me, her hand shaking. But when she talked to the doctor about what she saw, sealed in that pod, her voice was steady, strong. 

And still, she forgave Kellog. Somehow.

There’s no way in hell she’s going to the Glowing Sea without me.

After we stumbled onto the merc, MacCready and she hired him, I was afraid she wasn’t thinking clearly. “Jack, you didn’t even bargain with him.” She could usually get whatever price she named. She just had that way with people. 

“I know. But look at him, Garvey.” We both glanced over to where the merc stood glaring at Piper and Nick, trying to stand apart from our odd little group, but still clearly with us. “He’s scared. He crossed the Gunners. He may be good, but no one’s that good. Not without a bigger organization behind them. If he takes the caps and runs, at least he’ll have enough to get out of the Commonwealth.”

I ducked my head at that. She read people better than me. I don’t know where she’d learned it, or if she’d always done it. But she always knew what someone needed or wanted. And her heart was still generous. “You really think we’re big enough, Babe?”

“You and me?” She gave a short laugh and downed the bourbon she’d bought. “We resurrected the Minutemen. Maybe we are.”

She took off her sunglasses and looked at me with those eyes. I wished she wouldn’t hide them. Synthetic or not, a man could drown in them. “But that’s the wrong question, Handsome. The question we need to be asking is… are we big enough to curtail the Brotherhood and stop the Institute? Because I am not stopping the Institute just to have the Brotherhood step into the vacuum.” 

At that statement, she poured us both two more fingers of bourbon. I cleared my throat. “Then, I have an idea… allying with Goodneighbor, morally questionable though it is… might be a good thing.”

She looked at me, those blue eyes considering. “I’m open to suggestions…”

I smiled, thinking of her tactic with MacCready. “We could always use caps, right?”


	4. Need a Fix?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Ghoul in the Tricorner...

She looked like the easiest mark ever, walking into Goodneighbor with that scant armor on over that blue Vault suit. Of course she would be shaken down by one of the dumbest mooks around. 

It wasn’t done, though, extorting the brand new visitors. If we kept doing that, no one would wanna keep coming in. Shiny blue Vault suit or no.

Course, I didn’t see Piper, that reporter from Diamond City walking in behind behind her, either. And I didn’t know that the newcomer had already talked the mook down till after I’d already introduced him to a little Mayoral Justice. I watched from an alley as the two headed in to talk to Daisy. Didn’t hear a damned word, of course, but I knew if I was properly charming, Daisy would be a font of information.

“Before you even ask, I’m not telling you anything.” She was bent over her shop counter scrubbing an already clean spot with a dirty rag. I couldn’t tell if she was trying to clean it or make it dirty.

“Aw, c’mon, Daise! You know I gotta look out for the ‘hood!” I gestured, flinging my arms wide. “That Piper’s trouble and anything she brings in here’s gotta be, too!”

Daisy looked at me with her black eyes, the very expensive wig that nearly looked real allowed a strand of hair to fall across them. She gave me a long slow blink. The kind that usually unnerved humans.

I ain’t human. “I gotta know, Daise. For Goodneighbor.”

She huffed out a breath, blowing the strand of hair out of her face. “For Goodneighbor, eh? Fine. That suit’s the real deal. Not salvage. That was her vault. Cryo. She’s oldern’ me. By… five years? A month apart, can you imagine!” She gave a rusty laugh. I blinked. There was something alive in the Commonwealth older than Daisy? “Don’t you run one of your scams on this one, John Hancock.” Honestly, the woman had more glares than my own mother. “She knows things about before… that I ain’t seen nor heard about in ages. Certainly not in a museum or book or salvage.”

“Over two hundred years old, eh?” I looked in the direction they’d gone. 

“I mean it, Hancock. She’ll chew you up and spit you out. You think the Wasteland is rough? The time before was a whole ‘nother level of savage. And she was a lawyer.” She pulled out a decayed Boston Bugle. She pointed at faded picture and I could almost make out the face of the woman in the Vault suit on the front. “Her last big case before she went on maternity leave. That’s also how I know she weren’t lying. She won a lawsuit against Wicked Shipping and won, bankrupted them. Her husband was a war hero. I think she served, too. Most of us had to.

“You run a con on her, she’ll see it coming and take your head.” I met Daisy’s eyes as she folded the paper and stowed it away. 

“So, I’d best get her on my side, then, right?” I gave Daisy my best crooked grin. “I’ll tell Fahrenheit to set out the good China.”

Daisy snorted. “Your funeral, mayor boy.”

“Then do me a solid and make sure you tell a touching eulogy.” I tipped my hat at her and flicked the butt of my cigarette into the weeds outside. This Vault Lawyer was going to come looking for work. Everyone needed caps. Even walking ghost stories. 

Just so happened I had a ghost story of my own I needed checked out. But would she do it?


	5. Let’s Get This Show On The Road

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John Hancock signs up....

She surprised me. First, she didn’t take Bobbi’s deal. Then, she stood behind me while I told the people of Goodneighbor I was leaving them for awhile and then, told the reporter to meet us downstairs. She wanted a minute alone. 

Heh.

Before I could get much farther in my imagination than wondering if she looked as good under than Vault Suit as it hinted, she had me pressed against the brick wall of the balcony, an arm like a steel bar across my chest and what felt like a very sharp knife pressing into some very delicate real estate down below my belt. I froze and held my hands up, shoulder height, palm out. “Hey, Doll. Promise, I meant nothing by it, whatever I did.” 

She rolled her pale blue eyes. “I’m going to reach into your coat. You move, we’ll find out how badly ghouls need certain pieces of equipment.” Her voice was low, threatening. And sexy as hell. I almost wanted to press a little harder against the knife. 

My eyes widened and I swallowed. “Seeing as I’m rather fond of those pieces of … equipment, you have my attention.” Her hand was hot and smooth as she pushed in under the frock coat hunting for the inner pocket. Oh, shit. Daisy must’ve told her I took it. Dammit. I let out a nervous laugh. Her eyes never left mine. “I, uh, can explain, Doll.” The smudged bits had mentioned those eyes being odd, but not why they were special. 

She gently pulled the newspaper out of my coat and folded it over once, stuffing it behind her chestplate. I had to admit, I was suddenly jealous of a 200 year old piece of paper. She hadn’t pulled the blade away, though. She leaned her full weight against me, her free hand intertwining with my fingers, her face to one side of mine. God, her skin was so warm and smooth and soft. I had to turn my head to look at her and realized she was just a little shorter. Two more surprises. She seemed taller and she was willing to be this close to a ghoul? 

Her voice still low and threatening, doing things to my pulse with that knife, right there…. she asked me, “You read the article?”

“As much of it as I could make out.” She was aware ghouls were a great deal stronger than humans, right? Or was she betting on cutting me open before I defend myself? The odds were dead even, the way she’d trapped the one arm. 

I was actually excited. And not just because a beautiful woman had every inch of her body pressed against me. 

But that knife was getting a little too pointed. “And did you ‘make out’ my name?”

“I did.”

She moved her head to look at me straight on. “What will you do with that information?”

I considered my options for a heartbeat. I could show her, right now, this second, how badly she was underestimating me – turnabout was fair play after all. I wondered if I had the leverage at the moment to lean on her in return. But hell, it’s not every day I get pinned by some sort of virtuous valkyrie or whatever the Silver Shroud called it. I smiled slowly, tilting my head, letting her know how much I was enjoying myself. “What do you want me to do with it, Doll?” 

She withdrew the knife, but didn’t let me go. “Are you always this big a pain in the ass?”

“Usually…” I paused, considering. “I take that back. I’m usually worse. I’m actually behaving myself. Considering we just met.”

“You grabbed my ass within five minutes of our second meeting.” She dug her nails into the back of my hand. “That was behaving?”

That wasn’t quite as much fun as the knife, but it sent my imagination to some very interesting places. “Well…. It was complimentary?”

She searched my face for something, some sign only she could recognize. “You tell anyone, no one will find your body. You call me anything other than Jack, I’ll shoot you myself.”

The low voice was back. I held onto a shiver. “Hey, Institute troubles. I get it. I wouldn’t want them finding me, either. Promise, they won’t hear it from me.”

She straightened up, the heat of her body no longer pressing against mine, leaving a cold draft behind. I released the shiver the second she let go of my hand. She gave me one of those looks again, like I was a case she’d just agreed to take on and she wasn’t quite sure how to win. She crossed her arms over her armor. “All right, Hancock. Lead the way.”

Damn. And here I’d been hoping to admire the view. I was never going to be able smell hubflowers and gunoil again without getting a damned hard-on, was I. Fuck.


	6. View From The Vault

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Piper has a story...

You see, the interview wasn’t quite what I wrote in the paper. That was just an op-ed, a summary.  We don’t know a lot about life before.  Some like think they had it all, before the bombs fell.  A paradise.  Where nobody went hungry.  Jack… Jack laughed when I told her that.

(We were in the small office at her Red Rocket hideout.  She sat perched on the bed and I took the chair in front of the desk.  She stared at the snake poster hanging on the wall.  I made another mental note to ask her what it meant.  I thought I knew, but it might be good to get her take on it.)

 **Jack:**   You honestly think… Yeah, I was maybe 10, 15 pounds heavier.  I had to take in this damned blue suit when I crawled out of that hole and found some thread.  But I was lucky.   _Then._  I married a soldier.  My husband… he was a veteran.  There were benefits to being a soldier.  Former or otherwise.

 **Me:**   A veteran of what?  And what benefits?  

 **Jack:**   The Sino-American War, I think you call it. As to benefits… Better housing, a stipend, I got my loans for my law degree paid off.  I had Shaun in a good hospital instead of some diseased clinic.  But funding was being cut off, there were too many vets to pay for.  Because we kept going to war.  And the poor got poorer and the rich got richer.  Wandering around… I found a Vault that had been intended to house only the rich and elite.  Garvey was with me.  He threw up.  I just laughed.  Because of course.  Our vault, my vault… we were vets or the families of vets.  I can’t tell you how many army posts I’ve cleared out that were feral ghoul nests.  But the vets, what, were we supposed to come out and wave the flag?

 **Me:**  (Note:  She’s angry, very angry.)  You’re not happy at surviving?

 **Jack:**   (Note:  I don’t care what her eyes are made of, they’re really pretty. Even when they’re glaring at me.)  I shouldn’t have had to survive anything.  Codsworth shouldn’t have had to spend 200 years tending gardenias and cleaning floors of nuclear fallout,  _alone_.  You shouldn’t have been born into this wasteland.  Whatever the fuck went wrong in my time shouldn’t have happened!

 **Me:**   Would you change the past if you could?  You wouldn’t have met me.  Or Preston.  Or Hancock… Or Danse, or MacCready, or Curie or Nick… or Dogmeat or even  _Strong_.

 **Jack:**   (She slumped, now, thinking.  Defeated?  Is she ever? Pushes her hair off her face)  I – I don’t know.  Clearly the people in my time fucked everything up so badly, we offed ourselves.  We screwed the pooch, Piper.  We fucked up the planet, bad.  We had a  _war_ , on the _Moon_!  We couldn’t stop being aggressive against one another until we paid that ultimate price.  But all of you, even Dogmeat, deserve so much better than this. (She ducked her head.)  And to be honest, you deserved so much better than… what came before, too. (She gave a laugh) Hell, Curie and Nick and Strong would be nothing more than killing machines.  Right now, they kill if they have to and need to, to protect themselves or us.  Or in Strong’s case, for food.  Then?  There would be no  _science_  for Curie.  No investigations for Nick.  No… milk of human kindness for Strong.

 **Me:**   Worse than The Institute?

 **Jack:**   Honestly?  The Institute is rather tame compared to what I came from.   _When_  I came from?  What scares me about The Institute is that it seems to be repeating the advances from the past, without the lessons from it.  I spent my entire short legal career fighting assholes who thought because they were bigger than the little guy, that gave them the right to do what they wanted. That they knew better.  (She looked at me, and I caught my breath, her eyes were very intent on mine.)  They never know better, Piper.  The strong shouldn’t ever rule the weak, just because.  “Democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried,” after all.  

I laughed, she didn’t.  I looked at my cards for my next question.  There was a knock, though, at her office door.  She turned and her freckled face lit in a smile that made her look ten years younger than her physical age.  Hancock stuck his head in the door.  “You done with her, Piper?  Minutemen just blew through with word about trouble at the Abernathy’s.  Garvey’s got his boxers in a bunch to get going.  We need the General.”  

Jack glanced at me, I sighed and nodded, putting away my notebook.  “I’ll watch after Dogmeat.  One of these days you’re gonna take me on these runs with you.”

She smiled again, “I promise, but I wouldn’t feel right till I get you decent armor.  A leather jacket’s only going to stop a leer, not a bullet.”

Hancock winked at me.  “Sometimes, not even that much.”

I wrinkled my nose.  “Ew.”  He threw his head back in a laugh, ushering Jack ahead of him through the door, almost gentlemanly, his hand on the small of her back.  How he could be sweet to her and such an ass to everyone else was beyond me.


	7. Tender

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hancock has... opinions.

Jack needed tender.  The woman lost everything.  Hell, she had  _tender_  with Preston, the  _Hero_.  Why the hell is she flirting with a ghoul?  Yeah, even one with my kind of charisma.  I don’t do  _tender_.  I do rough, I do fast, I’m a dirty little secret locked away in Goodneighbor with the rest of the misfits.

I ain’t  _tender_.

And then she opens up on a supermutant with that modded-to-hell and back shotgun and I remember – She’s a survivor.  She’s all outta  _tender_  as well.  

Now I gotta wonder… why the fuck is she also with Preston?  I don’t mind… It’s just… we’re not exactly the same type o’ guy.  Maybe if I goad him enough, I’ll find out what’s under The Hero.  

 

 

(A/N:  Snippet.  To be expanded later.)


End file.
